With the advent of relatively inexpensive image, audio and video capture devices, whether they are dedicated devices, such as cameras, or integrated devices, such as still/video camera features of mobile telephones, etc., there has been more expectation of being able to take photographs and video at many more locations by many more people. Cameras are simple to use without extensive training and inexpensive to generate photos (perhaps even close to costless, in the case of digital photography), and as a result, most people do not consider it a requirement that they take courses in photography or learn darkroom skills—or even read a user manual for a camera—before they begin to take pictures.
While some of the shortcomings of the ability of one to take good (i.e., aesthetically pleasing) photographs can be overcome by just having the user take many more pictures than are needed and leave the sorting for later, this is not necessarily a solution in all cases, as that requires additional memory storage, requires the subjects of the photographs to pose for longer and might not even provide anything desirable photographs in the end.
To be sure, there are currently available cameras that improve some aspects of photography for the amateur. For example, most cameras can analyze an image and automatically focus the lens, so that the user is freed from having to estimate distances or manually set the focus. Most cameras can also set the shutter speed appropriately for a given amount of light that is falling on the camera. Some cameras can even detect smiles (or more precisely, the lack of smiles) and closed eyes to control when to take a photograph.
In general, cameras often have various settings and programming to optimize each of those settings, i.e., getting the ideal focus, the ideal aperture, the ideal number of smiles, etc. However, as professional photographers know, a pleasing image is often not simply obtained by optimizing each characteristic (e.g., camera setting).